


a thousand satellites (suddenly discover signs of life)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: infinite as the universe we hold inside [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Bad Wolf, Character Study, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Immortal Ianto Jones, Immortality, Introspection, M/M, Series 03 Fix-It: Children of Earth (Torchwood), also another immortal character, but spoilers, four-part character study, of four of my fav characters ever, study of how immortality functions in Who!niverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-12 16:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19135777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: The Bad Wolf is everything and all things. She is everything, everywhere, everywhen. She can see all of time and she can bend timelines to her will. She is the destroyer of the Daleks and the wielder of all-sight and all-power. She has broken timelines, ripped Daleks from existence, unmade entire armies.But she is also kind.The Bad Wolf sees her boys, alone and lonely, carving their own personal tragedies out of the universe, and she gives two more people eternity. Her beautiful, wonderful, pink-and-yellow girl and her wonderful, beautiful tea boy- she breathes life into them when they need it most, and turns them into undying.All the Bad Wolf wants is for the people she loves to stop being alone in the universe, to take care of those she loves. And so that's what she does.





	a thousand satellites (suddenly discover signs of life)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiladyDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiladyDragon/gifts), [Catherines_Collections](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/gifts), [BadWolfKnight1986](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolfKnight1986/gifts).



> Title is from "Touch" by Sleeping At Last.
> 
> Can this be considered a birthday gift to myself, as today's my birthday? Well, I'm going to count it as such. Nineteen years old, bitches! *off-key kazoo*
> 
> Alright, so Rose/Doctor was one of the first OTPs I ever had, before I ever knew what OTPs were (probably tied with Percabeth for first), and Jack/Ianto was one of the first I ever had once I really got into fanfic. So this is kind of a tribute to both, and a happy ending for both, in a way.

_I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love._

_We are good people and we’ve suffered enough._

**-nikka ursula**

 

The Doctor runs. He runs, and he runs, and he keeps running, and he never stays. He can't. Not when he has that blue box waiting for him, with the whole of the universe to save, with a whole host of memories that he has to find a way to keep from settling down for.

But his companions, none of them immortal, none of them able to keep running, all eventually stop running. They settle down, they are left behind, they die in action. Some way or another, forces come acted upon them in a way that they never can act upon the Doctor, and they  _stop_.

This is the nature of being a companion of the Doctor. This is the nature of being someone who loves a man who death can touch, but not destroy his memories. This is the story of people who fall in love- romantic, platonic, it never matters- with a man who will eventually shift into another, leaving you facing a face you don't recognize but who recognizes you.

The Doctor stood in front of the Vortex and he went mad. Not mad for power, or mad in general, but mad with fear.

He knew, staring into that endless swirling void, that eventually everything would end but him. Everyone would end but him. And he would have to either accept that or deny it to himself.

And that little boy went out and stole himself a way to run and never look back, and he expected that the rest of his eternity would be the same way: make friends, love people, save worlds, explore things, but always end each chapter still the lonely traveler. Still the runaway, the coward, still the man who regrets and forgets.

* * *

Location, Satellite 5. The world is ending, as it always has, but this just might be the permanent end.

Enter Bad Wolf.

* * *

The Doctor runs. He- she, eventually- changes. She keeps going, keeps moving, keeps trying to escape the wreckage she's left behind.

Jack Harkness, on the other hand, stays. He has to. This has become his essential nature- that of never changing, never progressing, just  _remaining_. Outlasting. Outliving. Outbeing, until the end of time.

Here's the thing that Jack never quite forgets: he has no choice in the matter. He is stranded, here on earth, without the choice to run, without the way to travel off-planet. His vortex manipulator is gone and he is left here on earth, just outlasting everything.

He is stuck here, and he has a choice regarding these living flickers of humans around him. Care or not care. Fall in love or burn steady with apathy, watching as these flickers turns to ash without getting attached.

And so he makes a choice. He decides to care, to the extent that he can. 

He has already existed for over a century by the time Torchwood goes up in a hail of bullets and he is left picking his own team. He picks people he gets attached to, people he wants to give a second chance to, people he wants to do right by before the universe does wrong.

Steadfast Tosh. Quickfire Owen. Sharp Suzie. Dependable Ianto.

All brilliant. All broken, some more easily obvious than others.

All of them will eventually fade away, he knows. They will all die, probably in deaths too young, living lives that burn too bright and too quick.

And Jack will be left. He won't flee, not until the bodies are buried. He is going to stay on this hunk of earth, this Level Five planet, this backwater planet that he loves too much-

(Both Jack Harkness and the Doctor love too much, but they treat that love in different ways. The Doctor is terrified of love, of what it can do to him, of how it can get him too attached; Jack dives in headfirst, knowing it will hurt, but choosing to go mad anyway. He is stranded, but he is deciding what to do with the world he's stuck in.)

Jack gets too attached, sometimes, clings to the memories of the past and to the people in front of him. Once he gets attached, he finds it hard to give people up to anything other than death.

But then he sees that his newest attachment- Gwen Cooper- is hurting everyone else that he loves (his friends, his family, the man that he's falling in love with), and Jack learns to let go of Gwen Cooper, learns to not cling to any reminder of a girl stuck in another world.

Eventually, in her place Torchwood gains three more members.

Clever Martha. Brave Mickey. Curious Luke.

(The Woman Who Walked the Earth. The defender against the Cybermen. Sarah Jane Smith's son.)

All brilliant, still. All a bit broken, too.

They are all still flickers, but they are the most brilliant flickers, the best of what can burn before it goes to ash. They are people who Jack loves, that he promises he is going to stay with until the bitter end.

* * *

Location, Thames House. A millenia ahead, a millenia behind.

Enter Bad Wolf.

* * *

The Doctor runs. Jack Harkness stays.

Ianto Jones chooses.

Ianto Jones gets to the Thames House and he gasps alive on the floor next to Jack Harkness, who still has tear tracks on his eyes from Ianto's death.

Ianto Jones takes one look at Jack Harkness, at those eyes that have outlasted a century of dead humans, at those eyes that are older than they have any right to be and will continue to be  _too old_ until the end of time itself, and he decides not to run. He decides to stay.

Ianto Jones kisses Jack Harkness on that cold floor, sharing that life-giving breath between them. "I'm not leaving, sir," he gasps into Jack's mouth, and he can feel Jack's hands shaking against back, trembling against Ianto's suit. He can hear Jack's breathless laughter, almost hysterical in its relief.

Ianto sees Jack for what he is. Not the hero, not the villain, not the gallivanting flirt or the unnatural fixed point. He sees Jack as the man he is, searching the universe for something to call his own, something that will last just as he has to.

Ianto Jones knows that there's going to be a lot to get used to, being immortal, but he knows that it will be worth it. He knows that he won't be alone, and that Jack will never have to be alone again, either.

Ianto won't leave. He won't run. He chooses, and he promises to stay, for everyone, but most of all, for Jack.

Ianto holds a hand up and Jack takes it and helps him stand up. "Let's go see the team, right, sir?" Ianto asks, and Jack nods.

"Guess we should," Jack says with a crooked smile, and Ianto reaches out with a weary hand (because he may be immortal, now, but dying is still tiring) to wipe the remnants of tears from his cheeks without saying a word.

They have the time to discuss what just happened later, after the 456 are dealt with. They have nothing _but_ time.

* * *

Location, TARDIS. The Eleventh Doctor sits in a seat, having just lived through the recycling of the entire universe through the Pandorica, trying to catch his breath.

Enter-

Well, enter no one.

Check your notes. The Bad Wolf never exited the story. She's still here, don't you see?

(Don't you see, Doctor? You are not alone. You have _never_ been alone.)

* * *

The Doctor is still running, they say. Companions have come and gone and he still runs, trying to escape the void. Trying to escape the inevitable.

A light flashes within the TARDIS, and a pink-and-yellow woman steps through a gap between worlds. It has been centuries since she last saw this universe, but she still shares the face she had the last time she saw the Doctor.

The Doctor, on the other hand, does not. This Doctor doesn't wear a leather jacket or trainers, doesn't have a quaff of hair or perpetual scowl. This Doctor does not wallow in grief or find a way to find hope in even the darkest of places. This is not a Doctor who battled a beast inside of an impossible planet or swear to a Dalek in an underground bunker that he would rather be a coward than kill it.

But this is still _her_ Doctor. This is still the man she fell in love with, even if this is a different face, even if this version of the Doctor wears a bowtie, even if there have been a thousand years between the last time she saw him and now. The woman knows that the man in front of her has two hearts that still beat the same rhythm, still has the memories of their time together.

"Well, you still look fantastic," she says, and the Doctor looks up, eyes wide and unbelieving. "The centuries have certainly done you well."

The Doctor, for the first time since she's known him, is speechless, as Rose Tyler smiles at him.

"How are you...how did you-?" the Doctor stumbles over his words, and Rose fills in the gaps.

"It turns out that taking the Time Vortex into you and surviving changes a few things," Rose says, "Like an inability to age or die proper. I lived with John in that world for nearly a century before he died, a proper human. And then I went searching for a way to get back to you. Spent some time with Torchwood, figured out how to travel between dimensions without breaking any- turns out the secret is just not hopping from the Cyberworld to this one, but bypassing the walls by going through another dimension, by the way- and then I made it. I promised I'd see you again. And here I am."

There's something sharp in her smile as she finishes with: "I won't leave you, Doctor, as long as you won't leave me."

And the Doctor, who has never done anything but run, looks at the woman he loves and takes her hand. "I won't leave you," he says, making the promise for the first time in his life, and she smiles back at him.

And then they run. 

* * *

The Bad Wolf is everything and all things. She is everything, everywhere, everywhen. She can see all of time and she can bend timelines to her will. She is the destroyer of the Daleks and the wielder of all-sight and all-power. She has broken timelines, ripped Daleks from existence, unmade entire armies.

But she is also kind.

The Bad Wolf sees her boys, alone and lonely, carving their own personal tragedies out of the universe, and she gives two more people eternity. Her beautiful, wonderful, pink-and-yellow girl and her wonderful, beautiful tea boy- she breathes life into them when they need it most, and turns them into undying.

All the Bad Wolf wants is for the people she loves to stop being alone in the universe, to take care of those she loves. And so that's what she does.

* * *

Rose and the Doctor go travelling, jumping from time to time and helping people that they bump into. Jack and Ianto proceed linearly, living each year as it comes, protecting the tiny humans on earth until all the humans leave earth and then the two of them follow them out into the universe, continuing to protect and help as they can.

Rose and the Doctor run, but it's not away from anything- it's toward something, together. Jack and Ianto stay, but not because they're stuck- it's by choice.

The Time Lord and their Lady. The Captain and his Second-In-Command.

(The Bad Wolf and her Oncoming Storm. The Archivist and his Fixed Point.)

None of them ever alone again, someone always by their side, someone they trust and care about and love. They are fighters and healers and travelers and lovers, always with someone by their side.

To the ends of the universe, one way or another.

For all time.


End file.
